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HOME VIDEO; Another Horror To Contemplate

By Peter M. Nichols

Published: September 3, 1999

Bubbling all summer with ''The Blair Witch Project,'' the horror genre gained another prized ingredient this week with the video reissue of Tod Browning's ''Dracula'' (1931), with a new score, by Philip Glass. For more phantasmagoric developments, however, there is the continuing adventure of a little film via the New Jersey Pine Barrens called ''The Last Broadcast.''

For several weeks last month, Stefan Avalos and Lance Weiler's movie, a digital production made for $900, was a selection of the Amazon.com Advantage for Video program, which provides filmmakers with no other distribution channel an opportunity to offer their wares. ''Virtual shelf space,'' said Mr. Weiler, who added that 1,000 copies of his film had been sold from Aug. 4 to Aug. 24, when the tape was taken off line.

That's a large number for such a short period. In fact, he said ''The Last Broadcast,'' about strange killings deep in the New Jersey woods, was outselling many new main-line titles. Amazon doesn't release sales figures, but Paul Capelli, a company spokesman, said ''The Last Broadcast'' moved briskly. Mr. Weiler said the tape was withdrawn when arrangements were made to distribute the film in video stores later this month.

By now, of course, killings deep in the woods have a certain familiarity. A diverting concoction despite its obvious contrivance, ''The Last Broadcast'' bears an uncanny resemblance to ''The Blair Witch Project.'' Both films are fictional documentaries about fatal encounters with an unknown deadly force. Both use hand-held video cameras, sometimes wielded on the run, to track or flee from alarming developments in the bush. Mr. Weiler, whose film has a more involved plot than ''Blair Witch,'' calls the similarities a twilight area. ''It's a crazy parallel universe,'' he said.

While the connection helped ''The Last Broadcast'' on Amazon.com, it did little to close the gap with ''The Blair Witch Project,'' which has made nearly $125 million at the box office and is to be released on video on Oct. 22. If it's any consolation to Mr. Avalos and Mr. Weiler, their film does have an interesting production history. Shot with digital cameras and processed with desktop PC's, the film has never been on celluloid. In a most unusual release, it was beamed to a satellite and beamed back again to the rooftops of theaters in five cities, downloaded through cable onto a hard drive and run through a digital projector onto the screen. Mr. Weiler and others in his company, Wavelength Releasing, near Doylestown, Pa., have demonstrated the process at many festivals and call it the future of film distribution.

For now, though, there is video tape (a DVD is also planned). Mr. Weiler said that Wavelength Releasing has prepared 17,000 cassettes of ''The Last Broadcast'' for its store debut. ''In the end 'Blair Witch' was one of the best things that happened to our film,'' he said.